Monday, January 18, 2016

Blowing in the Wind--Ushuaia to El Chalten (November-December 2015)

Gaucho horse-riding skills start young!
After the excitement of Antarctica, it took us a few days to get going on the next stage of our travels, cycling through Patagonia.  November 14th was spent walking around Ushuaia (running into a gaucho parade en route), napping and having beers with fellow passengers.  On November 15th we got up from our first night of deep, deep sleep in three weeks and headed out of Ushuaia to walk in Tierra del Fuego National Park.  Like everything in Ushuaia, it’s overpriced (300 pesos for a return bus ticket to go 12 km?  230 pesos admission?) but we had gotten back an extra US$50 that we weren’t expecting in our Antarctic refund and decided that it was mad money that needed to be spent.
On the shore of the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego National Park

It was mad money well spent.  We walked for four hours along the shore of the Beagle Channel and then inland to Lago Roca, spotting birds and savouring wonderful views over beaches and distant mountains.  The dense beech forests were dark and mysterious, draped in old man’s beard moss and sporting bright orange spherical fungi.  Steamer ducks and upland geese bobbed offshore in the crystalline waters.  
Flightless steamer ducks, TdF National Park
Most of all it was such a relief to walk after three weeks of being cooped up on the ship.  I was enormously relieved that three weeks of doing my stretching exercises on board meant that my sciatica was almost completely gone and I could swing my left leg freely without pain, striding rather than hobbling along.
Ashy-headed geese, TdF National Park
The next day we dragged ourselves down to the bus stop at an ungodly early hour for the long bus ride to Punta Arenas.  We were almost 13 hours on the road, partly because it took absolutely forever to cross the Argentina-Chile border, partly because the ripio (gravel) sections of the road were awful, and partly because it’s a long, long way from Ushuaia to anywhere.  The scenery, once we’d gotten over the coastal mountains, is a monotonous plain, part of the Patagonian steppe.  We amused ourselves looking for guanacos and rheas amidst the endless cattle estancias.  On the ferry across the Straits of Magellan, Terri spotted Magellanic penguins swimming beside the boat, probably the highlight of the day.  At 7 pm we staggered off the bus and made it to our hotel and were reunited with our bicycles, which we had mailed to the hotel from Switzerland.  It was a brilliant solution for getting the bikes to South America, but we hadn’t reckoned with Chilean customs, who charged us US$300 in customs duties to bring the bikes into the country.

After a very, very, very windy day in Punta Arenas, we decided that we could do without the hassle of cycling north to Puerto Natales through incessant headwinds and bought bus tickets for the next 240 km stretch.  We made it to our hotel, booked ahead of time on Booking.com, and checked into one of the most disastrously shambolic hotels I had stayed in for a long time.  We nearly died of exposure in our room, and we stored our bicycles in a backyard that compared unfavourably with a junkyard.  It was a relief to get on the bikes the next morning (November 19th), buy some groceries and start pedalling north towards Torres del Paine, finally underway on our cycling tour.

The centrepiece of our cycling was planned to be the Carretera Austral, but to reach the southern end of the Carretera, we needed to get to El Chalten, Argentina, and on the way we would stop off at the tourist hotspots of Torres del Paine and El Calafate to do some hiking and take in the breathtaking scenery.  I had been to these three spots back in 2000, but it was all a first for Terri and I was keen to revisit places I had loved the first time around.  We rode north out of town under grey skies and into a very cold headwind.  After 15 long kilometres, we turned west off the main road towards the Cave of the Milodon and a back road into the southern part of Torres del Paine park.  It was slow going with the wind and a bit of a rollercoaster road, and Terri in particular found it a shock to the system.  We passed by the Cave of the Milodon without going inside (it’s the site of an important natural history find, but the present-day site looks pretty Disneyfied), the pavement turned to rough gravel (slowing progress yet further) and we ended up camping in a farmer’s field beside a beautiful stream, still 40 km south of the park gates.
Paine Massif seen from Lago Serrano
The next day we set off early and passed by a couple of pretty lakes.  The weather was changing for the better in terms of sunshine, but we still faced substantial headwinds.  Along the road we spotted lots of birds and started to catch glimpses of the Paine Massif ahead, still sticking up into clouds.  A car which stopped to talk to us contained Ursula and Michael, a German couple living on a sailboat in the South Pacific; we chatted to them, and continued to run into them over the next few days.  Terri was taken with the idea of sailing in Polynesia:  travelling somewhere substantially warmer, and not having to sweat up short, steep gravel hills.  By mid-afternoon we had entered the national park, paid the eye-watering entrance fee and turned off for a late luncheon feast at Serrano campground.  We put up the tent behind a well-built wind shelter and went for a walk to enjoy the wonderful riverside scenery, birdlife and perfect views of the now-cloudless Paine Massif.  Seen from a distance, these mountains are a study in beautiful contrasts:  the rugged ice-rimed top of Paine Grande on the left, the two-toned rock faces of Los Cuernos in the middle, dark and chunky Almirante Nieto on the right with the polished steep spires of Las Torres just peeking up from behind. 
Terri riding towards the Paine Massif from Lago Serrano

After a night of well-earned sleep, we awoke to clear skies and more postcard-perfect views of the mountains and then cycled off through the park towards the main gate at Laguna Amarga.  A searching wind was raking the plains and stirring up dust clouds on the gravel roads.  It was mostly at our backs, but when it was even slightly from the side, it buffeted us mercilessly and made it hard to steer or even to stay on the road.  We rode past a series of lakes and rivers, each with great views over the water towards the mountains.  Guanacos dotted the landscape, and grebes, coots, upland geese, cascaroba swans and flamingoes glinted in the waters, while condors circled effortlessly overhead.  Terri found the combination of the wind and the relentless steep hills too much to take, with most of the hills done on foot and pushing her bike.  After making it to a lookout over Lago Sarmiento and its shoreline of microbe-built stromatolites, she thumbed down a lift with a pickup truck the last 12 km to Laguna Amarga.  Ironically, the road afterwards was largely level and downhill.  
Flamingoes in one of the tiny lakes in Torres del Paine National Park

At the park gate we watched the obligatory park rules video and rejoined the world of mass tourism as the main road from Puerto Natales came in from the other direction.  Casey, a very friendly woman from New Orleans who works for the park service, offered to take care of our bikes and excess luggage in the staff quarters, and we gratefully accepted, repacking our trekking gear and food into our backpacks as we chatted with Ursula and Michael.  We caught a bus the 7 km to the Las Torres campsite, put up our tents and slept soundly, excited to be setting off on foot the next morning.

Guanaco regards us quizzically
We awoke at 7:30 to a chorus of birdsong and intermittent cloud.  The early wakeup was wasted when I had the worst series of issues with my MSR XGK stove since the dark days of my 1998 Tibet trip.  It kept clogging incessantly, no matter how much I cleaned it.  We didn’t leave until almost 11 o’clock.  On the bright side, though, Terri went off to the local shop outside a fancy lodge just down the road and ran into Kurt and Liz, our friends from the MV Ushuaia who had been trekking in El Chalten and El Calafate while we were riding our bikes.  I did my morning stretching exercises against sciatica and was pleased to find that I could touch my toes for the first time since August. 
On the way up to the Base de los Torres
The walk that day, up the valley towards Las Torres del Paine (the actual rock spires after which the entire park is named) was wonderful.  The clouds burned off and gave us great Kodachrome colours on the lakes, rivers, flowers, trees and (especially) the mountains.  
Someone knows where the real danger lies!
After two hours of grunt work to get up a steep initial slope, the walk up the valley to a snack break at Refugio Chileno and further along to the free campsite at Base de los Torres was relatively flat and effortless, with great views of waterfalls.  We put up our tent, had lunch and then headed up to the mirador (lookout) for late afternoon views of Las Torres.  It was a steep 50-minute climb, but as we were only carrying daypacks, it was easier than the morning’s walk.  Las Torres were just as amazing as I remembered them from almost 16 years earlier, architecturally perfect granite spires rising sheer from a vestigial glacier.  We took photos, toasted the scene with some Singleton’s single malt and sat there absorbing the beauty.  
Las Torres in late-afternoon light
Even though there were lots of people up there, there was enough space to spread out and avoid feeling crowded.  We were in a great mood as we strolled back downhill to our tent and cooked up pasta in an overcrowded cooking shelter; Torres’ campsites have not coped well with the huge explosion in visitor numbers over the past decade.

Detail from the lake beneath Las Torres 
The next morning we set an alarm for 4 am and headed off at 4:30 for sunrise back at the mirador.  It was a cloudless morning, and we were optimistic about catching the perfect red early morning light on the towers.  We brought along our sleeping bags and warm clothing, and as we lay on the cold rocks waiting for the light show to begin, we were glad for every last bit of insulation.  Around us a hundred or more people sat or lay in small groups, cameras at the ready.  Sadly, although there were no clouds visible, the sun rose through a bank of thin cloud on the horizon, meaning that there was no direct sunlight and hence no magical red blush on the rock.  We were glad that we had gotten at least some good light the afternoon before, and the pictures of Las Torres that morning weren’t bad; they just weren’t perfect.
Subdued morning light on Las Torres
We descended back to camp and the sorry saga of my MSR stove continued.  After years of stalwart service, everything seemed to be going wrong at once.  This time the culprit was the fuel pump, whose flimsy rubber pump cup suddenly popped off, tearing the rubber and rendering it useless.  Without a means of pressurizing the gasoline in the fuel bottle, the stove didn’t work.  I was severely disappointed, especially as it was a new fuel pump, purchased back in late August in the Pyrenees, and shouldn’t have been dying such a young death.  We borrowed a stove from the camp warden to finish cooking a huge breakfast of bacon, roesti (hash browns) and eggs, and packed up our gear trying to figure out how to deal with a non-functional stove.  Just as I was finishing drying the dishes, I looked behind the warden’s hut and there, lying on a table, apparently abandoned, was an MSR fuel pump.  I picked it up and tried it; it seemed to work.  I asked the warden if it was his, and he said that a tourist had left it behind by mistake a week or two before, and that I was welcome to take it.  This was little short of miraculous, as very few tourists in Torres seem to use MSR stoves, and for the one part I needed to appear suddenly at the exact moment that I needed it was very fortunate.  We set off at 11, chatting with a Swiss-Canadian cycle touring couple as we retraced our steps to Refugio Chileno and then back to the main valley.  We had a long march in front of us, and so we pushed on as far as we could before hunger drove us off the main trail to a small lake where we ate watching geese, ducks and a friendly, fearless plumbeous rail cavorting in the water while we soaked our sore feet.
Fearless plumbeous rail

The rest of the walk was equally pretty, along the north shore of Lago Nordenskjold, although the winds scouring the lake surface blew harder and harder and had freshened into a raging gale by the time we finally reached the chaotic Cuernos Campsite.  As mentioned above, the national park hasn’t dealt well with increasing visitor numbers, and there were not nearly enough possible places to pitch a tent to accommodate all the trekkers arriving.  Terri and I scored what was probably the very last available tent site; other late arrivals had to keep on walking towards the next campsite in the dusk.  We cooked up macaroni and cheese and slept well, sheltered from the raging winds by the dense bush all around the tent.  The new fuel pump worked like a charm, and the fuel clogging situation seemed to be a thing of the past as well.

Terri, experienced in dealing with overcrowded tourist situations after years in the Swiss Alps, decided that we should get up and roll the next morning to make sure we got a tent site at Campamento Italiano the next day.  We set an alarm for 7:30 and were walking before 9 am, having breakfasted on crackers and leftover mac and cheese.  Two hours of death marching along Lago Nordenskjold, 
Waterfalls falling upwards in crazy winds
watching the wind shred the lake surface and make waterfalls fall upwards, and creating small waterspouts over the lake, and we were at Campamento Italiano before anyone else from our campsite had arrived.  
Female magellanic woodpecker
We had even found time along the way to stop and watch a female Magellanic woodpecker working over a dead tree for grubs, completely unconcerned at our presence.  We cooked up another big feed of roesti and eggs and bacon and then headed up the Valle Frances relatively late, at 2 o’clock, towards the base of Las Cuernos.  Hundreds of tourists were headed the other way, having set off from Italiano early in the morning, and we were among the very few headed uphill so late.  The views of the Cuernos, of Las Torres just appearing over the ridge behind, and (on our left) the huge hanging seracs of Paine Grande were amazing (and actively falling over with tremendous sound effects), and even though we didn’t have time to make it all the way back to the top of the valley (Campamento Ingles), we returned to camp very happy with the exercise and the views.
Terri and Lago Grey
Our last day of hiking, November 25th, was a repeat of the previous one in that we awoke early, had a frugal breakfast of cold-soaked oats and then hit the road by 8:30. We had more sunshine and the wind had dropped, so it was perfect for view and for hiking.  
Ubiquitous flower throughout Torres del Paine
Much of the hike led through a burnt-out section of forest, eerily lifeless other than a few of the ubiquitous rufous-collared sparrows that dominate the landscape.  We made it to Paine Grande campsite, a big open space beside Lago Pehoe, by 11 o’clock and had our pick of tent sites, choosing one well sheltered from any possible winds.  We cooked up a bean stew for lunch, chatting with an Israeli family, and set off for a day hike by 2 o’clock up towards Grey Glacier.  We had set off too late in the day, and although we had wonderful views of the icebergs floating in Lago Grey, and back over the southern part of the park, we didn’t get far enough along the trail to see the calving face of Grey Glacier.  We did have fantastic views of the impressive summit of Paine Grande and spent time watching soaring condors who were nesting high on inaccessible cliffs, and the general feeling of walking through such a pretty, well-kept landscape was absolutely perfect.  We returned, cooked up yet more roesti, this time with bacon and a cheese and onion omelette, and then turned in early after watching the sunset light play on the towering faces of Los Cuernos.
Paine Grande's ice-rimed summit
November 26th found us on the catamaran across Lago Pehoe back to the main road.  We got to the other side only to find that there were no buses back to Laguna Amarga for another 3 hours, so we walked to the road and stuck out our thumbs.  One of the first vehicles to pass stopped and an ebullient Polish-American guy, a larger-than-life character named Jan, had one of his passengers move up front to sit on her husband’s lap so that he could shoehorn us into the back seat with our backpacks.  It was a tight squeeze, but Jan’s tall tales of Latin American adventures kept our minds off the discomfort and the terror-inducing driving, and we were soon back at our bikes.  We re-packed and I pedalled off back towards Las Torres campsite while Terri got on a bus back to Puerto Natales, laden with excess baggage weight that she was determined to mail back in an effort to make her bicycle more manageable on steep hills.

I had a deliciously lazy day off the bike the next day, birdwatching, juggling, playing guitar, reading, napping and generally relaxing while Terri bought more groceries, mailed home everything non-essential and caught the afternoon bus back to Torres from Puerto Natales.  We cooked up steaks (fresh from Puerto Natales) and drank wine, ready to hit the road again the next day.  We had both thoroughly enjoyed the magical landscape of Torres del Paine, even if the overcrowding and overpricing did get a bit much at times.  It would be nice if the considerable income stream that CONAF, the government agency administering the park, were reinvested into the park infrastructure in a more visible way, rather than being treated as a cash cow.

Run, rhea, run!
November 27th found us ready to ride.  We cooked up oatmeal and a big omelette, then Terri caught the bus back to Laguna Amarga at 9 while I rode my bike.  By 10 am Terri had her bike out of Casey’s storage and had repacked her noticeably more slender panniers.  We rode off into a brisk headwind along dirt roads featuring Terri’s favourite, short steep hills.  The scenery was magnificent, with clear skies and lots of wildlife to see:  rheas darting across the grasslands and the road, and lots of guanacos grazing beside the road.  Condors wheeled lazily overhead, and pintails swam in small ponds in the depressions in prairie. After a while the road turned just enough to turn the wind into a tailwind, the hills flattened out and we left the national park boundaries.  We eventually hit the asphalt of a main road and cycled through a howling crosswind to the tiny village of Cerro Castillo where, after thinking about camping, we opted to sleep indoors out of the maddening gale.  One of our fellow guests, Phil, an Englishman on a motorcycle, came out to dinner with us and we swapped travellers’ tales of life on the road.
Phil, taking the slightly easier way through the Patagonian steppe

The next morning the wind had freshened even further.  We checked out of Chile efficiently, then bumped seven agonizing kilometres along a terrible gravel road to the Argentinian border post, where we stood in line for an hour behind 2 dozen silver-haired German and Swiss couples driving their own campers.  Bored young border guards showed their petty bureaucratic power with passive aggressive tactics.  To keep Terri from completely losing her patience, I kept her sedated with BBC podcasts on the iPod.  Eventually we were released and fought our way through the never-ending crosswind over the potholed gravel until we eventually reached the fabled RN 40, La Cuarenta, the road that runs from southernmost Patagonia to the northernmost point in Argentina along the base of the Andes.  It used to be all gravel, but now almost all of it has been paved, including our section.  We turned left gratefully and rolled effortlessly over asphalt with the wind now at our backs.  We made easy progress except on one huge uphill.  

On the downhill, we met three French cyclists, Axel, Letitia and Eva, who had started in Colombia and had been fighting the headwind all day.  They looked tired, cold and fed up with the wind.  From them we learned of a few good shelter options ahead, including the one we finally ended up at, the road maintenance compound at Tapi Aike.  The new paved RN 40 takes a huge detour east to La Esperanza here, but the old gravel road still runs directly north.  
Terri and I with Daniel at Tapi Aike
Daniel, the friendly man running the maintenance compound, put us up in one of the trailer dormitories used to house workers in the winter snow-clearing season, and let us cook in the big kitchen.  We were relieved to be indoors away from the maddening wind, and cooked up a small feast on the stove.  Another cyclist, Ralf, rolled up after us and also stayed in a neighbouring room.  Daniel showed us a series of photos of him with the various cyclists who have stayed with him over the past couple of years, and we added to the roll.  We were rocked to sleep by the wind buffeting our trailer.

Ralf at Tapi Aike
The next morning the wind was fiercer than ever.  After cooking up a hearty breakfast, Ralf left first and we followed.  It was a strange day of cycling, as the wind, now blowing at near gale force, was right at our backs for most of the day.  We just had to point the wheels forward and hold on to race across the pampas at 30 km/h, using the brakes to stay under some sort of control.  It was exhilarating but also dangerous, as occasional gusts from the side could blow us right off the road, or into huge potholes.  Terri took a spill partway through the day and her knee still bears the scars.  I made it all the way to the end of the ripio, 55 km, before I took a tremendous crash, being blown off the road into soft gravel, having my front wheel stop and somersaulting over the handlebars at 30 km/h.  I tucked my head and shoulders down, rolled over my back and landed on my feet, completely unscathed but rather shaken.  
Terri being blown across Patagonia's ripio

We found ourselves standing on the paved version of the RN 40, outside another road maintenance station, with the wind now fully in our faces.  Terri was in despair, as cycling into the headwind seemed completely out of the question.  I had to agree and, although we knocked on the door of the road maintenance place, nobody seemed to be home.  We stood with our bikes beside the road, trying to thumb a lift to El Calafate, and after two hours of futility, we decided to stash the bikes out of sight behind the station and go into town more lightly laden.  Eventually a bus driver returning from a maintenance run with an empty bus picked us up and took us to the tourist hot spot of El Calafate, where we put up our tent in a campground, ate a huge meal and ran into Ralf, who had battled his way through the headwinds until finally the road direction changed enough to cycle.  We felt slightly wimpy.

Armadillo running away rapidly
The next day we decided to avoid the winds by renting a car to transport ourselves and our bikes to El Chalten.  We got the car at typically elevated Argentinian tourist prices and started off with a drive out to Perito Moreno Glacier.  
Perito Moreno glaciar
It’s a spectacular spot, with a huge, wide glacier tumbling down off the Campo de Hielo Sur and almost cutting the long, narrow arm of Lago Argentino in two.  It was a hot, almost windless day (ironically; it would have been a great day to cycle) and we sat in the sun watching the glacier and hoping to see it calve off a huge iceberg.  In fact the glacier makes a lot of noise, but only seems to spit out frequent smallish pieces rather than occasional huge bergs.  There are a lot of tourists visiting this spot, but the Argentinians seem to have mastered the art of spacing them out with kilometres of metal walkways and viewing platforms so that the crowds don’t become overwhelming. 
Perito Moreno glacier pouring down off the continental ice cap
We drove back to El Calafate, then another 85 km out to pick up our stashed bikes, back almost to El Calafate and then north along the beautiful Los Leones river to Lago Viedma and then west to tiny El Chalten.  We had cloudless skies all day and had amazing views of Cerro Fitzroy and Cerro Torre standing out against the skyline.  We found a place in El Relincho campsite, a very laid-back and hippie-esque spot, ate and then slept the sleep of the dead.
Terri overjoyed to be in a car instead of on her bike

In the morning, I drove all the way back to El Calafate to return the car, then wandered around El Calafate looking for guitar strings, groceries and lunch; all three missions were successful.  El Calafate is the hometown of now-former President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner and her late husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner, and a big billboard on the outskirts of town read “Welcome home, Ms. President!”  El Calafate has boomed under the Kirchners’ patronage, with a new airport, big hotel developments and a huge increase in population.  In the October/November presidential elections, Santa Cruz province, in which El Calafate is located, voted strongly for her preferred candidate Scioli; he ended up losing a close race to Macri, the new president, who opposed Kirchner’s populist and ineffective economic policies.  On a few signs and walls around town, I saw “CFK Fuera” (CFK, her initials, “out!”) but this seemed to be a minority position.  I finally caught a bus back to El Chalten, chatting with an American/Swedish couple I had met in Torres del Paine.
Cerro Torre looking very vertical
Meadowlark in El Chalten
Our four days off the bike in El Chalten were wonderful for Terri and me.  We had perfect weather, with hardly a breath of wind, barely a cloud in the sky, epic views of the mountains and lots of great hiking.  We stayed in town and did day hikes up to the base of Cerro Fitzroy and Cerro Torre, although the free campsites up in the mountains looked like great places to stay as well.  We saw lots of birdlife, including our long-sought-after 
Male Magellanic woodpecker
male Magellanic woodpecker (huge, with an all-red head and a Dr. Seuss-like tuft atop his head) as well as the secretive huet-huet.  We cooked up huge meals, including roast beef and luscious steaks, and had late-afternoon beers every afternoon at a local brewpub.  The town reminded me a lot of Jasper, Alberta, where my sister lives:  a small tourist town at the foot of great mountains, inside a national park and much less touristed than its better-known neighbour down the road (El Calafate in this case, Banff in the case of Jasper).  

At the foot of Cerro Fitzroy
I loved the vibe of the town, and I could see why a number of gringos have moved there for the summer season over the years to climb, mountain bike, ride horses or just enjoy the hiking.  We also enjoyed the interactions with our fellow travellers, many of whom we would see again along the Patagonian tourist trail.  El Chalten and its wonderfully preserved surroundings, so much less touristed than Torres del Paine but so similar in terms of wildlife and sheer rock faces, were definitely the highlight of our Patagonian swing.

Terri at the brewpub after another great day of hiking

Finally, having bought (expensive) tickets on the two ferries headed towards Villa O’Higgins, we were ready to roll out of Argentinian Patagonia and off onto the first stage of the Carretera Austral.  We had had amazing views, great wildlife, wonderful hiking and a mix of good and not-so-good cycling to get this far.  Now it was time to get to the main course:  the legendary Carreterra Austral!

Majestic Fitzroy

Sunday, December 27, 2015

MV Ushuaia Expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula--November 2015

After sailing away from our unforgettable four days on South Georgia, life on the MV Ushuaia reverted to its usual routine during a crossing:  three big meals a day, a lecture or briefing every morning and afternoon, lots of reading and watching seabirds and a feeling of suspended animation.  When the sea was calm, I was fairly functional, but if the swell kicked up a bit, I took to my bunk to sleep and read.  In retrospect, I should have made use of the scopalomine patches that I had bought on the recommendation of my sister, but I preferred to try to sleep off the low-level seasickness.
Iceberg floating past South Georgia
Our trip down from South Georgia to the Antarctic Peninsula was long, the longest crossing of the trip.  We left on the late afternoon of the 5th, after our sail up Drygalski Fjord, and didn’t come into sight of land until nearly sunset on the 8th, when we passed Clarence Island and, in the distance, Elephant Island, another key site in the Shackleton saga in 1917.  We did have things to look at, luckily:  lots of icebergs are swept up along this route by the prevailing currents and waves, and some of the bergs were a perch for penguins, particularly Adelie penguins.  We spotted fur seals swimming in the open ocean, and two of the keen birdwatchers, Stefan and Andrew, thought they had seen macaroni penguins swimming by as well.  Of course we had our usual accompaniment of albatrosses (royal, black-browed and wandering), petrels (Southern giant and Cape), storm petrels, prions and terns.  However the sightings that got us most excited were whales.  The afternoon that we were sailing towards Drygalski Fjord, Ricky spotted a spout right beside the boat, and as we gathered to look, we realized that we were surrounded by between 15 and 20 humpback whales, feeding and displaying.  One of them turned on her side to give huge flipper slaps to the water surface, presumably to disorient or stun prey.  For at least ten minutes, there were spouts all around us.  At other times a single spout would appear and then there would be no further sight of the whale; the biologists said these were probably beaked whales of some sort.  Another day we had a good 8 or so whales running parallel to the boat, but not close enough to get a real look at them.  It was good to see that with whaling banned in the Southern Ocean, the number of whales is at least stable and may be slightly increasing after being pushed to the brink of extinction (for the right and humpback whales, anyway). 

We ran into more headwinds and contrary currents than anticipated, which meant that we had to jettison plans to visit Elephant Island as it was too late in the day to go visit in daylight hours.  This was a big disappointment to Oz, who wanted to see where Shackleton and his men survived for months under an overturned lifeboat.  In the event, we got a dramatic view of neighbouring Clarence Island as we sailed past; the icy slopes and big glaciers reminded me a bit of Muztagh Ata.
First view of the Antarctic Peninsula
We woke up early on Monday, November 9th to find ourselves in another world.  Overnight we had steamed to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula at Esperanza Station, and most of us scrambled outside before breakfast to take pictures of the dramatic scenery.  On our right the Antarctic mainland extended in a series of ice cliffs and tumbling glaciers.  On our left a series of islands, ringed by pack ice, enclosed us in a long, narrow strait of ice-free water.  
Huge tabular iceberg near Esperanza
We spent the early morning on deck, taking photos by the dozens of the landscape, of the huge passing tabular icebergs, of the smaller bergs and their animal denizens (particularly Adelie penguins and Weddell seals).  The colours and shapes looked unreal, too straight-edged and uniformly white to exist in nature.  We used up a lot of camera memory as we continued steaming towards the Argentinian scientific station at Esperanza, one of the locations associated with Nordenskjold’s ill-fated expedition in 1901-04.
Adelie penguins hitching a lift on a berg

The plan was to land at Esperanza or at nearby Brown Bluff, one of the largest colonies of nesting Adelie penguins on the planet.  We put on our landing gear (insulated waterproof trousers and jackets, rubber boots, life jackets) and lined up for a Zodiac ride to shore.  As always, Monika, Agustin, Mariela, Ale and Kata went first to assess landing conditions.  I thought things looked too windy and rough to even contemplate a landing, as gale-force katabatic winds howled down off the ice cap to drive big white=capped waves across the water.  I thought that if it weren’t our first chance to land on the mainland of Antarctica, there was no way that we would even be thinking about landing.  Sure enough, in a few minutes the guides were back shaking their heads:  landing was out of the question given the conditions.  We were all pretty disappointed, given that we were keen to land on the seventh continent, but it was the right decision.
The iceberg that it took us an hour to circumnavigate

Instead, we did a cruise around the Antarctic Sound in the ship, taking pictures of the truly massive tabular icebergs, pack ice, Weddell seals and mainland glaciers.  One tabular iceberg was well over a kilometre long on a side and over 20 metres high (and hence about 180 metres deep!!).  The crew and the guides were impressed by the quantity of ice floating around; some of them hadn’t seen so much ice in almost 20 years of sailing to Antarctica.  They called it a “Shackleton year”, in memory of the fact that Shackleton’s 1914 expedition was doomed by a year of extraordinary quantities of ice.  There are suggestions that the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica are shedding ice into the ocean at an ever-increasing rate because of warming, because of water getting underneath the glacial tongue, and because of the collapse of ice shelves such as Larsen B which releases ice to flow into the sea more rapidly.  Whatever the cause, it was an unforgettable experience to see the huge, simple shapes and colours of the outsized icebergs, sort of like being part of a Lawren Harris painting. 
Imposing iceberg barrier at the mouth of Antarctic Sound

After lunch, since the wind had not yet dropped, we set sail early for a long haul around the tip of the Peninsula and down the west coast towards Brown Station, our next target.  As Monika said, the problem with visiting Antarctica is that the number of places where you can actually land on the shore is very, very limited, and with 2015-16 being a Shackleton year, some of that very limited supply of landing spots are ruled out by excessive ice.  Deception Island, a famous spot where a volcanic caldera encloses a hot spring bubbling into the Antarctic Ocean, is completely iced in this year and it seems unlikely that any tourists will swim within its natural harbour this season.  As we headed north and then west around the very northern tip of Antarctica, we had to pick a path between dozens of tabular icebergs, most as big or bigger than the monster we had sailed around earlier.  It was incredibly impressive to see this much ice, and even the crew popped out on deck to snap photos of the maze of icebergs on all sides.
Beautiful calm waters near Brown Station
We slept well that night, and in the morning we found ourselves steaming up the Gerlache Strait, close to Brown Station.  The weather was perfect, and the surface of the ocean was glassy calm, between the increasingly frequent small icebergs and their irregular surfaces.  One of my favourite images was of an irregularly shaped iceberg with a swirling natural Jacuzzi pool at one end in which a mother Weddell seal and her juvenile pup were swimming.  There was an almost unnatural calm over the water and the land, and it was clear that we would finally be able to land on the Antarctic mainland. 
Weddell seal in his ice jacuzzi

We split the passengers into two groups, and Terri and I were in the first group to land at the long-dormant Brown Base, another Argentinian scientific base.  We clambered ashore and were surrounded by hordes of gentoo penguins on shore and fishing offshore.  Cormorants flew by with nest-building materials in their beaks, snowy sheathbills flew silently by, and Weddell seals lounged on the shore nearby.  
Finally on the mainland of Antarctica, Brown Base
Dramatic glaciated peaks towered over the base, and the waters of Gerlache Strait looked almost black, like an ancient obsidian mirror.  We wandered around, took photos of the comical gentoos and revelled in the views.  When our shore time was up, we clambered into a Zodiac and cruised around the glassy waters for another hour, looking for seals and admiring the glaciers with their calving faces tumbling into the ocean. 
Amazing colours and textures
Monika told us that when she first came to Brown 20 years earlier, the 6 separate glaciers now visible all flowed together into the ocean some 2 km further out to sea.  We saw the cliffs where the cormorants were building their nests, and admired the icy architecture of the mountains.  Monika steered our boat between icebergs, and even through an icy passage where one huge iceberg had an underwater connection between two above-water sections.  When we returned to the ship for lunch, we were all greatly satisfied with our taste of Antarctica.
Gentoos at Brown

While we ate, the ship moved a bit up the Peninsula towards our next destination, Orne Island, a huge nesting site for chinstrap penguins.  The weather was perfect, and the views over the icecap that covers the entire central spine of the Peninsula were epic,  We passed a distant Quark Expeditions ship anchored near another penguin colony (the same ship that would hit an iceberg in the night a few nights later and put a big gash in her hull) and admired from afar another huge colony of Adelie penguins.  
Chinstraps dancing
Orne Island was a tiny gem, full of chinstraps (which we had not yet seen) and a few rogue gentoos.
Chinstrap penguin
  We spent our shore time photographing the chinstraps, the gentoos and the offshore icebergs.  Just as Terri and I were turning our back on the iceberg-filled bay, we heard a big crunch and crack, and running back uphill, we were in time to see a huge iceberg split in two and then turn over completely, unbalanced by its new shape and mass.  
Watching the iceberg rolling over at Orne Island
It was one of the things we had most wanted to see, and so watching an iceberg turn over felt like the icing on the cake.  We had a group photo taken at the high point of the island, and then headed back to the ship past a sleeping Weddell seal that had not moved a centimetre since we had passed it on the way to shore.
Lazy Weddell seal

That night we set sail for the South Shetland Islands, and in the morning we woke up to a driving blizzard, through which we could see the islands in the distance.  An after-breakfast briefing by Monika delivered the unwelcome news that a massive weather system was passing through (the tail end of a full hurricane) and that it was out of the question to try to land in these conditions.  In fact, we would spend the day hiding in the lee of the South Shetlands and then try to make a run for it across the Drake Passage at night between the receding hurricane and another approaching gale.  The Drake Passage crossing was going to be a 9 out of 10 for discomfort.

We spent the day in limbo, having a lecture, watching videos and then having a wonderful Antarctic Quiz, in which the team I was on led until the very end, when a round about music and film and TV themes scuppered us and handed victory to the Argentinian photographic safari crew. 

The two full days spent crossing the Drake Passage were truly miserable.  The ship rocked and heaved more than ever before, and meals were impossible, as I could not make it through a meal without being overwhelmed by nausea.  One of the expeditioners, Tom, was thrown clean out of his berth in the middle of the night and managed, through sheer luck, to land on his feet.  On the afternoon of the 13th of November we finally came into sight of the islands south of Tierra del Fuego and within a few hours we were in the protective lee of the archipelago.  It was such a relief to have a stable ship under our feet that we were quite giddy as we had the traditional ceremony of getting landing certificates, having a final toast and then having an Olympian feast for our final supper. 
Orne Island bergs

The next morning we woke up to find the familiar confines of Ushuaia Harbour closing in around us.  We had a final massive breakfast and then lined up to collect our 10% rebate in crisp dollar bills (always useful in the strange currency exchange world of Argentina!) before being released.  Most people headed to the airport that day, but Terri and I headed to our hotel for long nap and then a walk around Ushuaia.  That evening a few of us who hadn’t yet left town gathered for a beer or two at the Dublin Pub.  It was hard to believe that after 20 days, our once-in-a-lifetime trip was over.  It was time to head off for new adventures in Patagonia.



Practical Tips:  I think that if you’re going to spend the big bucks and go to Antractica, it’s worth paying more to include South Georgia and the Falklands, both of which are visually impressive and have incredible concentrations of birds.  They also have more guaranteed landing spots than the Peninsula.  It’s also worth checking whether it’s a big ice year (a Shackleton year) and whether this will make much of the Antarctic Peninsula’s landing spots inaccessible.  A good starting point for any Antarctic expedition is Daniela Gonzalez’ Ushuaia Turismo website, which lists every single departure out of Ushuaia, its itinerary and its list price.  Last-minute specials are available; the best price we saw was for US$ 3500 for a 10-day Antarctic Peninsula trip.  The longer trips (such as ours) are discounted much less often and by smaller amounts.  It’s a lot of money, but I thought it was worth every last cent.  Just do it!